The Second Red Scare and McCarthyism

Since we discussed the Red Scare and McCarthyism a little this past week (While talking about Hugo Black and his dissents on behalf of communists and their first amendment rights) , I did some more research on the movement and McCarthyism, and found out about another one that occurred around the same time: the Lavender Scare. Not many people have heard of this, myself included. But it arguably "harmed far more people" than the Red Scare. Why haven't we heard of it? Why is this "second red scare" ignored and left out of most lessons? I'm sure you can guess.

The Lavender scare was described by many as a "witch-hunt" against homosexuals because they were considered a threat to government safety. Because many homosexuals around this time were closeted, it was thought that there were a number of them working in the U.S. government and that they could pose a security risk to the US. They were even considered as much of a threat as communists.  McCarthy assumed that communist spies could be coercing them into revealing confidential information by using their sexuality as blackmail. This resulted in the perpetuation of stereotypes and homophobic views of the LGBT+ community, as well as more than 5,000 people being fired from federal employment. With support from J.E.Hoover, FBI director, McCarthy and Cohn (Who was actually later accused of being homosexual too) were responsible for pushing this movement, with McCarthy often using homosexuality as a smear tactic to take down his political enemies. He often stated that if you weren't with McCarthy, then you were a homosexual or a communist. Both were viewed as a threat to the "American way of life", and were attacked in almost equal force. The Lavender Scare also resulted in Executive order 10450 by Dwight D. Eisenhower, which banned homosexuals from working in the federal government, causing the forced outing of many federal staff members to their co-workers, family, friends, and community. This prevented them from easily receiving another job, and prevented them from joining the military. Order 10450 stayed in place until 1995 when "don't ask don't tell" replaced it.  There was even evidence based on some government experiments that homosexuality was not a disease contrary to the popular belief at the time, and did not make people more susceptible to blackmail. These reports were hidden and ignored until the Navy was forced to reveal them in 1981, but they still refused to reveal the full report and its supporting documentation (This was called the Crittenden report).

This attack on homosexuality perpetuated negative stereotypes about the LGBT community for decades. It forced the major communities underground, and forcibly outed many people. Along with this, homosexuality was still considered a disease or a mental disorder by the psychiatric community (And actually was only fully removed from lists of mental disorders on the DSM in 1987), and people could risk being subject to conversion or aversion therapy (Some states still today allow it for minors, meaning parents could send their kid, against the kid's will, to conversion therapy Conversion therapy is a really present and dangerous thing even today). These consequences are unable to be ignored, but some good has come out of this injustice too. Frank Kameny, an astronomer for the U.S. Army, was fired as a result of the Lavender scare and executive order 10450, leading to him becoming a dedicated advocate for LGBT rights, picketing the white house, and earning his place as a key LGBT rights figure and one of the main players in the LGBT rights movement. If not for the anger created by these unjust firings, we may not have had the Stonewall Riots (which are a story long enough for a whole different post) when we did, and who knows when the strong movement for LGBT rights would have been sparked?

Keeping LGBT history out of public knowledge is a trend that has continued, and will continue for a long time. (Chief organizer for the march on Washington and MLK's helper Bayard Rustin? Gay, and we don't learn about him. The gay men that were not liberated from concentration camps, not acknowledged as victims of Nazi persecution, and still considered criminals after the war? Don't hear about them either. ) This doesn't mean things can't be done to acknowledge the harm that has come to the LGBT community and still teach about historical events that targeted these people. Acknowleging that these things happened, for example that the lavender scare was just as powerful and harmful as the Red scare, and allowing the LGBT community to have history and to have a place in history is of the utmost importance. Minorities will almost always be written out of history to some extent. But I want to remind you all that there is always a history, if you look hard enough for it, no matter how buried it might be. I had to look for a while and found out about it on accident, but the lavender scare was a real thing that happened, under the reign of McCarthyism.

The purpose of this post is to educate. To teach myself and others about the history that is missing from what we learn in school (I know we only talked about McCarthyism a little in Gov. so far, but what about APUSH last year? Spent a long time on McCarthyism then). And to remind everyone that "History is a lot gayer than you think".